


where the wall meets the floor

by prettydizzeed



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series)
Genre: Divorce, F/F, Healing, Post-Season/Series 02, Self-Discovery, amanda gets everyone’s shit together and along the way finds her own happiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:19:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27632638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettydizzeed/pseuds/prettydizzeed
Summary: Amanda is, in a nutshell, fabulous in a crisis; unlike Daniel, who gets overwhelmed by any problem he can’t punch, she finds relief from having something to do, breaking a situation down to its disparate pieces and bending each of those pieces to her will. So when she steps into the hospital elevator only to find Johnny Lawrence already there, the smile she gives him, while weary and full of grief, is genuine.
Relationships: Amanda LaRusso & Anthony LaRusso, Amanda LaRusso & Johnny Lawrence, Amanda LaRusso/Carmen Diaz, Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 39
Kudos: 79





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> “Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking, ‘I am falling to the floor crying,’ but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it—you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realise you didn’t paint it very well and when you’re having sex with your next lover on this very floor they will also notice that you didn’t paint it very well and they will think less of you for it.” —Richard Siken

Amanda is the CEO of a successful multi-branched company that she co-built from the ground up and has effectively been running by herself all summer. She goes to all her kids’ events, attends every school board meeting and county commission session, contributes both her time and money to the local LGBTQ+ homeless shelter and Black art and culture museum. She’s active in her UCC church, even though the rest of her family never goes, and the PTA and the Homeowners’ Association (mostly to keep them from instituting anything particularly evil), and she goes to therapy twice a month and calls her parents every Sunday. She is, in a nutshell, _fabulous_ in a crisis; unlike Daniel, who gets overwhelmed by any problem he can’t punch, she finds relief from having something to _do,_ breaking a situation down to its disparate pieces and bending each of those pieces to her will. So when she steps into the hospital elevator only to find Johnny Lawrence already there, the smile she gives him, while weary and full of grief, is genuine.

“How is Miguel?” she asks, trying to inject the full extent of her sincerity into her voice. She isn’t just making conversation; she wants the kid to be okay.

Johnny’s expression is devastating. “He hasn’t woken up yet, but the doc said that’s normal. Nothing to do but wait.”

“Do you have someone to wait with?” she asks, and he laughs, sharp as a bone spur. 

“Jack Daniels,” he says, and she swallows. Daniel has mentioned Johnny’s penchant for drunk driving in many a rant. “Carmen isn’t speaking to me,” he adds. “Can’t blame her.”

“It’s not your fault, John,” she says, and looks away politely when he cries. The door opens with a chime, and suddenly she wants nothing more than to make sure Johnny Lawrence doesn’t leave this hospital on his own. There’s been enough damage today. 

“Listen,” she says, touching his elbow lightly, letting him follow her to the seating area, largely empty on a Monday night, “is there someone you can call? Just to be with you right now?”

He shakes his head, eyes glazed over with grief. “Burned most of those bridges already.” 

“Well, I’m going to appoint myself my husband’s rival’s keeper all night if you don’t find me someone to delegate the job to,” she says, smiling the way she does at pushy shareholders or her kids when they were little and asked to stay up late, the one that says _I’m not angry at you, but I am serious, so it’ll be easiest for both of us if you drop this immediately._

Johnny sighs. Unlocks his phone. No passcode, Amanda notes, filing it away into her mental For Emergency Situations folder between her insurance number and her kids’ blood types. “Never mind, forget this,” Johnny says, thumb still hovering over the contact despite himself, and she takes his phone, reads the name, and dials.

She doesn’t think about what it says about his mental state that he lets her, about what would’ve happened if she hadn’t needed some distance from Daniel at the same time he was leaving the hospital. The thing about being great during a crisis is that she’s a wreck after one, will probably spend weeks sobbing into her pillow, unable to move from the sheer weight of it all, but for now she just double-checks her mental calendar that yes, she has a therapy session Wednesday morning, and says, “Hi, is this Bobby?” into the phone.

To be honest, she wasn’t sure how she’d feel about the kind of person Johnny Lawrence turned to when his life fell apart, but when Bobby speaks, she likes him instantly. His voice feels safe, familiar, like the one she used with kids when she was a camp counselor during her college days. “Is Johnny okay?” he asks immediately, and she nods reassuringly even though he can’t see it.

“Yes, I’m here with him right now—I’m Amanda, a friend of his.” She can sense Johnny startle beside her, which is a good sign; he’s not fully dissociated or something. “I’ll let Johnny decide what details to share, but he’s had a family emergency tonight, and I think it’d be best if someone was with him, for support.”

She knows, without being able to say for sure how, that Bobby will hear between the lines: _for keeping him safe, for dragging him bodily away from blaming himself, for making sure he isn’t drinking alone._ “Send me the address,” he says, and she does. “I’ll be there as soon as I can—an hour, tops.” 

She does him the favor of not asking how many speed limits he’d be breaking, since he’d done her the favor of not asking her last name. “He’ll be here by ten,” she says, and Johnny nods, more like he’s giving up on supporting his head for a second at a time than a motion he’s actively controlling. 

They sit in silence for a moment, and then he gives a long, shaky exhale and looks at her. “If you’re gonna be babysitting me for the next hour, would you mind telling Carmen I’ll cover the medical bills? I’ll have to get a loan, so I can’t get it to her immediately, but—as soon as I can.” 

And there, from Johnny Lawrence, of all people, is the lifeline for Amanda to keep from drowning in her grief and fear tonight. “Absolutely not,” she says, and he blinks at her. 

“Look, I know you don’t like me, but I’m trying to make things right here—”

“No, no, I know you are,” she says, patting him reassuringly on the arm, which he doesn’t even brush off. “I’m saying no because we’re going to cover it. Robby was Daniel’s student, and this is just as much Daniel’s fault as it is anyone’s, and we’re the only ones involved whose lives it won’t destroy to foot the bill. Do you know if any other students were hospitalized?” she asks, pulling her tablet out of her purse and opening a new spreadsheet.

Johnny just looks at her for a long minute, then decides either that her logic is sound or that he’s too tired to argue. Whichever it is, it works out for her, because he says, “This kid Mitch Robinson has a concussion. Hawk—uh, legal name Eli Moskowitz, he’s pretty fucked up all over, had to get a bunch of glass taken out of his skin. I think he might’ve also needed some stitches. Uh, Tory Reynolds, she probably needed medical attention but I can’t say for sure if she got it.”

Amanda nods, typing to stave off the anger and panic: parents’ names, phone numbers, what hospital they would’ve been taken to. She jumps slightly when Johnny lays a hand on her wrist.

“Hey,” he says, “you look like you’re freaking out, come on. What’s going on?”

She stops typing, blows at the hair falling into her face, and bites back the first thing she thinks. Sarcasm isn’t going to help anything, her mood included. Instead, as Johnny slowly removes his hand like he’s backing away from a wild animal, she starts to cry.

“Daniel’s students did this,” she says, swiping at her eyes, and roots through her bag for a makeup wipe to preemptively take care of any mascara tracks. “I just—he goes on and on about how his kind of karate isn’t like that, you know, is about self-defense, and I know it’s supposed to be, I’m not criticizing a culture I know next to nothing about, but—whatever he taught those kids, it wasn’t that.”

Johnny swallows. Pats her shoulder awkwardly. “Hey, we don’t know that,” he says. “I taught my kids—uh, a lot of aggressive bullshit, and maybe LaRusso’s—maybe your husband’s kids really were just defending themselves.”

She shakes her head, then fishes a tissue out of her purse and blows her nose. “I don’t know if that even matters anymore,” she admits. “Sometimes—sometimes you need to walk away from a fight, you know? And it scares me to death that he isn’t teaching them that option.”

She’s mentally chastising herself for saying so much—what would Johnny Lawrence know about walking away from a fight—when he nods. “I got a text from Aisha,” he says, which isn’t what she was expecting. “Kreese—that’s my old sensei, the guy who fucks up everyone’s heads—he pulled some paperwork bullshit behind my back with the landlord, and Cobra Kai is his now. And he—he can have it, you know? I’m done. I never should’ve started this, and now the only way to end it is for me not to play anymore.”

Amanda puts her head in her hands. She doesn’t want to think about the shades of gray of human morality, the contrast between the man beside her owning up to his mistakes and the man she married immediately vowing revenge over her daughter’s hospital bed. So she doesn’t. Right now, she has work to do. 

“We’ll buy you a new dojo,” she says twenty minutes or so later, a decision she’s thoroughly weighed rather than an afterthought.

He shakes his head. “Your money can’t fix this one, LaRusso. But thanks.”

“What are you going to do?” she asks, realizing after it’s out of her mouth that it’s really none of her business. He shrugs. 

“Grovel for my old job back, I guess. Dunno.” 

“Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do,” she says, looking up from her tablet long enough to meet his eyes, and he squints at her, shakes his head. 

“God, you’re something else. Neither one of us deserve you, you know that?” 

She presses her lips together. “Thank you, Johnny.” He nods and tips his head back, arms crossed, and keeps his eyes closed until a harried, balding man with kind eyes and a gentle energy rushes through the automatic doors. 

“Johnny,” Bobby says, his voice so full of relief that Amanda has to look away. “Hey, man.” They hug tightly, no manly pat on the back and separate ways shit; Johnny’s still seated, and Bobby folds his body over him, shielding him from the world and the hospital lights. Amanda swallows hard. 

“Thank you,” Bobby tells her, and she nods.

“I’m going to talk to Carmen,” she says, setting a hand lightly on Johnny’s shoulder, and spares him from attempting to pretend he isn’t crying by leaving before he can say a word. 

Carmen covers her mouth with her hand and sobs when Amanda tells her they’ll cover the hospital bills. Her eyes were already red, and her nails are a gorgeous teal, which seems like the wrong thing for Amanda to notice at the moment. God, were they dancing just inches away from each other only last night? 

Amanda takes her really nice car to her massive house that her husband barely spends time in anymore, digs through the back of the drawers of her expensive bureau for some t-shirts and sweatpants that haven’t seen the light of day in years, and tosses those, a couple of water bottles, relatively decent instant coffee packs, phone chargers, and some unopened toothbrushes and toothpaste into a reusable grocery bag. She changes her own clothes while she’s there—a sweatshirt in public for the first time since her twenties, probably, and the expensive tennis shoes Daniel gave her for Mother’s Day a couple of years ago that she only wears on the treadmill. Carmen and Rosa stare at her in surprise and approval, respectively, when she passes the bag to them. They take turns changing in the tiny hall bathroom, Carmen only gone a maximum of three minutes from Miguel’s side. 

“I should check on my—on Daniel,” she says, “and Sam. Let me know if you need a ride home, or food, or anything, okay?”

Carmen nods. She smiles weakly when Amanda squeezes her hand, and Rosa envelops her in a tight hug before she walks out the door. 

Sam is sleeping when she gets there, her young forehead wrinkled, her arm red and angry around the stitches. Her baby girl, who’s never had to deal with any serious pain in her life, nothing more stressful than a C in a class or more agonizing than a short-lived grounding for dishonesty. Amanda thinks, despite her own resistance to the realization, that her daughter actually has the perfect life her husband once thought his high school bully had. _Just because it’s a nice house doesn’t mean nice things are going on inside,_ Daniel had quoted to her in the middle of the night a couple months ago, crying, still smelling of alcohol even after showering and brushing his teeth, and she had smoothed his hair back and kissed his forehead. But until now, her daughter has had a childhood and adolescence straight out of a storybook or sitcom, unblemished and unabusive. Even tonight will probably end up being a tense footnote on an otherwise positive summary—a few stitches, a cracked rib, two terrified and guilty parents by her bedside all the while. Amanda can’t stop prodding at the wound of Johnny’s words, how he wasn’t sure Tory would get medical care even if she needed it. The ache in her chest echoes back to when she was in college, getting her pre-vet roommate to set a broken finger in the CVS parking lot rather than risk a bill she knew her parents couldn’t afford. 

She sits in the chair next to Daniel and takes his hand. He looks over at her, open and startled, but she’s busy, paying more attention to the feel of his palm than she has in years, memorizing it for when it isn’t hers to hold anymore.


	2. Chapter 2

Amanda sits Daniel down at the dining room table in front of the laptop the next night and holds her breath as he looks through her spreadsheet, which has grown and morphed and gained additional pages and color-coding over the past twenty-four hours. 

“So you were able to get in touch with Tory’s mom?” he asks, and she nods. 

“She’s agreed to find Tory a therapist and unenroll her from Cobra Kai in exchange for us not pressing charges. This column is the therapy appointment costs, and this one makes up the difference in tuition for Topanga’s dojo.”

“What’s this column?” Daniel asks, hovering the mouse over something shaded in a light red, voice tight like he already knows. “The, uh, the lawyer?”

Amanda swallows. “I want a divorce.”

After talking it out for a couple of hours, calling the aforementioned lawyer, and deciding when to tell the kids, they go their separate ways for a bit. Daniel takes Sam and Aisha out to dinner; Amanda heats up leftovers and scrolls through her checklist. All in all, it’s incredibly anticlimactic, almost disturbingly normal, until around eleven PM when Daniel asks if she wants him to sleep on the couch again.

“You can if you want to, but you don’t have to,” she says, and he shakes his head. 

“I really don’t want to be alone right now, to be honest.” She nods. She knows the feeling. So he gets in bed beside her like he has most nights for the past nineteen years, and she holds him in her arms, and they both cry until they can barely breathe. “You’re my best friend, you know that?” he says into her shoulder, and she nods.

“I know. You’re mine, too.”

*

“I’m paying for the door my ex-husband kicked in, and you’re going to do me the favor of not bitching about it,” Amanda says as soon as Johnny opens the door, which, yeah, it’s definitely still barely holding on to exactly one of the hinges. 

“How the fuck did you even find me?” he asks, squinting at her, but he looks more tired than hungover, so that’s a plus. 

“The address was saved in Sam’s Find My iPhone history,” she admits, and Johnny just blinks.

“Look, I don’t care about your me-phone eyeglass smart stalker shit,” he says, waving a hand. “Creepy as hell, by the way, but. Thanks. You want a beer?” 

“No, thanks,” she says, but Johnny has already left the unstable door hanging open and disappeared into the kitchen, so she steps inside, carefully lifting the door onto its frame behind her. 

Johnny hands her a glass of orange juice and plops down on the couch with a Coors. “So,” he says. “Ex-husband, huh?” 

“Ah, so you caught that,” she says, a little sheepishly, and he nods.

“Got a mind like a steel trap,” he agrees, smacking his lips. Amanda laughs, and he chuckles along with her, seeming surprised at himself to be doing it. She caves and perches on the edge of a chair.

“The papers aren’t finalized yet,” she says, and doesn’t elaborate. “Should’ve written you a bigger check,” and it’s a blatant change of subject, but it’s also true; looking around, it’s impossible not to notice the broken TV propped up against the wall and the various other signs of a scuffle, lingering even these weeks later. 

Johnny shrugs. “Nah, the rest of that was on both of us. One second I’m trying to calm him down and the next I've got my firsts up. Old habits and all that, I guess.”

“Well, he did break into your house,” she says, tilting her head, and he tips his beer bottle at her in acknowledgment. 

“You wanna talk about it?” he asks after a few minutes of silence, and there’s a lot she could say to that, starting with _Not with you_ and ending with _Yes, but I’m scared to,_ but in the end she just takes a sip of her juice and shakes her head.

“I don’t know him anymore,” she says. “It’s as simple as that.”

Johnny gives a long exhale. “I know him maybe too well,” he admits. “That’s the, what’s the word, irony of it.” He smiles to himself, small and real. “My high school English teacher would be proud.”

Her glass is almost empty when Johnny speaks again. “I never thanked you for being a character witness for Robby. Probably the only reason why his sentence was so short. So, thanks.”

Amanda nods. “If he needs help getting a job after he gets out, or re-enrolling in school, just let me know.”

“I’ll do that,” Johnny says, nodding, and she feels her shoulders relax at the release of tension she hadn’t known she was holding. 

Carmen is leaving her own apartment at the same time Amanda steps out of Johnny’s, closing the door gently behind her. “Hey,” Carmen says, summoning a tired smile for her despite who Amanda’s obviously just been visiting. “I was just about to go visit Miguel, you want to come with?”

“Sure, if that’s okay,” Amanda says, smiling back. “I can drive, give you a bit of a break.” Carmen nods gratefully, and they sit in silence as Amanda backs the Audi out of her parking space. 

“Miguel comes home in a few days, right?” she asks, and Carmen nods.

“I still don’t know how to thank you for the wheelchair. For all of it, of course, but—that’s so much nicer than the insurance would ever have covered.” 

“Don’t mention it,” Amanda says, reaching over to rest her hand on the back of Carmen’s for a moment. “If there’s anything else I can do, please let me know.”

“As long as you promise to do the same,” Carmen says finally, in a tone that brokers no argument, and Amanda tilts her head thoughtfully. 

“Well—I could use a favor, to be honest, if you’re free Friday.”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Anthony is about to start at a private school for middle school, so it starts a few weeks later than Sam’s high school. So he’s just now coming home from camp at the end of this week, and Daniel normally picks him up, but he’s—well, he’s going to be busy moving some of his stuff out.”

“Ah, I see,” Carmen says. “I noticed you didn’t have your ring on, but I didn’t want to pry. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” Amanda says, blinking back unexpected tears. “It’s for the best, but—well, it’s hard. Anyway, it’s a several hour trip, and I hate driving that far by myself… Especially right now, I’m bound to just chase myself in circles over everything I need to get done. So. Some company would be nice, if you’re up for it.”

“Of course,” Carmen says, smiling. “Mamá will want to thank you, keeping me from re-dusting the apartment twenty times before Miguel gets home Monday.”

“We’ll keep each other distracted, then,” Amanda says, returning her smile.

*

She picks Carmen up at eight in the morning, and she’s gorgeous, in jeans and a gray t-shirt with her long hair pulled back in a ponytail. Amanda feels overdressed, still unused to interacting with other moms while in anything less than a blouse and slacks—work clothes, armor.

She expects them to talk about the heavy stuff, Carmen’s paraplegic kid and her own nonexistent marriage, but instead, Carmen turns on the radio and teaches Amanda the bachata songs she learned from her Dominican neighbors in the aughts. “I have a heart that has been mutilated by hope and reason,” Carmen translates for her as Juan Luis Guerra sings, “a heart that wakes up early no matter where.” If Amanda wasn’t driving, she would close her eyes and press her forehead into the cool glass of the window, let the words sink into her skin, but as it is, she shifts her hands on the wheel and leans into the feeling of the leather on the bare skin of her ring finger. 

_Pobre corazón, que no atrapa su cordura…_

The hours pass more quickly than she ever could’ve hoped, Carmen telling anecdotes from nursing school and the ER and Miguel’s toddler years, Amanda sharing about the weirdest car mods they’ve ever gotten in the trade-in lot or the arguments she used to get into with her political science professors.

“A double major, huh?” Carmen asks, and she nods.

“My dad wasn’t about to pay for anything without me getting a business degree, so.” She shrugs. “And that one, at least, ended up working out in the end.”

“Not the end yet,” Carmen points out, smiling, and Amanda swallows. No, it isn’t. 

They pull over in a small town for a quick lunch, some local Tex-Mex place that makes Amanda think of that double date, how she and Daniel moved with the comfortable familiarity of two bodies that had known each other for two decades, how effortless Carmen had looked, twirling so the sleeves on her red top flowed out around her. It hasn’t even been a month since then. 

She realizes as they get back on the road that that was the last date she and Daniel will ever have.

When they arrive at the camp, Anthony runs up to her as soon as he sees her, faster than she’s seen him move all year aside from when he’s antagonizing Sam, and throws himself at her waist. She’s pretty sure he isn’t even messing with his phone behind her back. 

They get him checked out and loaded up, and he hasn’t mentioned the FaceTime call where they told him they were getting divorced and asked if he wanted to come home early, but Amanda knows something is wrong because every time she glances into the rearview mirror, Anthony is staring out the window instead of playing a video game. 

“Will I have to stay with Dad?” he asks suddenly, about an hour into the drive back, and her hands tighten on the wheel. Carmen politely gets her phone out and makes herself look busy.

“We—well, we haven’t gotten to the custody arrangement part of things yet. But you can decide where you want to stay, sweetie.”

“Good,” he says, “I don’t want to live with him,” and Amanda tries so hard to push back against the messy, dangerous mixture of surprise-relief-fear-superiority that arises in her at his words.

“Well, that’s—that’s okay,” she says, measured, not wanting to argue with him out of a sense of fairness and inadvertently strengthen his conviction. She’s trying to decide whether to ask follow-up questions when he beats her to it.

“He doesn’t give a shit about me,” Anthony says, and her heart breaks, more than it did seeing Carmen’s son or her own little girl in the hospital, more than when Sam texted her in a panic that Monday morning about what her husband of almost twenty years had said about the boy they’d taken in and she didn’t recognize the man in the story, more than when she told the love of her life that she couldn’t be married to him anymore. Her precious child, her baby boy, her stubborn and proud and abrasive sunshine, carrying around the weight of so much unspoken rejection for god knows how long.

“He only cares about Sam,” he continues. “Because she can do karate and stuff.”

 _You’re wrong,_ she wants to say, but—but she isn’t sure if he is, and either way, it wouldn’t change his mind. So instead, she says, “Well, we aren’t going to make you do anything you don’t want to do. other than the usual stuff, like eat your vegetables and go to bed at a reasonable hour,” and he nods.

“Figured I couldn’t play the pity card on that one. You’re too tough for that,” he says, and it’s so affectionate she wants to cry.

“You know me so well,” she says, smiling despite herself. “Tell you what, how would you like to kick my butt at MarioKart when we get home? We can order a pizza.” 

“Really?” he asks, beaming. “You don’t have work stuff?”

“No,” she says. “It can wait.”

Daniel is still unpacking things at the dojo—his place, she’s going to have to get used to thinking of it like that—when she and Anthony get home after dropping Carmen off. A quick call into the house reveals that Sam isn’t home, either, probably out helping him, so she kicks her shoes off and sinks into the couch and orders a pizza for the two of them to split, Hawaiian because they can never eat it around Daniel without him making annoyed comments about flavor profiles. It’s always been their go-to for their rare mother-son nights. 

She maintains a lead in MarioKart for all of thirty seconds in the first race, after which Anthony proceeds to soundly beat her every round for the next hour. “Are there car salespeople in the Mario universe?” she asks, dropping the last crust into the box. “Because _that_ I’d be good at.” Anthony laughs, which feels like such a victory she could cry. She’s been doing that a lot lately, getting to the brink of tears and never actually feeling them fall.

“That was fun,” he says when she finally announces it’s bedtime. “Can we go back to school shopping tomorrow?” And she nods, and kisses his forehead, and throws away the pizza trash, and waits on the couch for her almost-ex-husband and eldest child to come home to her for one of the last times.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s mid-November when Sam moves out. Amanda thinks out of nowhere, while hugging her daughter goodbye and waving from the driveway, of how she’d offered a few days after Sam got her stitches out to get her some scar removal cream and Sam had declined, saying she didn’t want to just act like it’d never happened. Amanda knows, of course, on a logical level, that that isn’t why Sam is going to live with Daniel now that his dojo-turned-bachelor-pad has been deemed habitable for a teenage girl, but it still underscores some fundamental difference between them. _Amanda_ had wanted—still wants, from somewhere deep and terrified in her gut—to act like the fight never happened, or, barring that, to track down and remedy every last repercussion. Maybe that’s somehow wrong of her, means she’s denying some unalterable facet of human existence, playing god.

Maybe she just needs a nap.

Laying alone in what used to be her and Daniel’s king bed hasn’t gotten any easier, so she’s standing in the middle of the too-large living room debating the merits of sleeping on the couch versus the probability of back pain, which she definitely can’t afford when she needs to be at work at 6 AM tomorrow in order to get all the opening procedures done so she can take off from 7-8 to get Anthony up and ready and dropped off at school, when Anthony walks in. 

He glances up from his Nintendo for a split second, then again for longer, then turns it off and slides it in his pocket. “Are you okay?” he asks, and it sounds kind of accusatory, but she knows that’s just what happens when he gets emotional. Daniel always took it personally, no matter how many times she tried to explain.

“Yeah, I’m fine, honey,” she says, taking note of her body and uncrossing her arms, rolling her shoulders to try to release some of this lingering tension.

Anthony rolls his eyes. “Liar.” She blinks at him, her mouth falling open in surprise, but does him the favor of not denying it. “Next thing I know, you’re gonna do that bullshit faking thing Dad always did until you end up indoctrinating a bunch of kids into a karate cult because you can’t engage with your own negative emotions.”

Amanda laughs despite herself and rubs her forehead. “Okay, point taken, I'll stop pretending like I’m fine. I just don’t want to unload all my problems on you, kiddo, that wouldn’t be appropriate.”

Anthony rolls his eyes. “I’m not asking you to _unload_ anything, Mom, oh my god.” He tugs her by the hand onto the couch and wraps his little arms around her, tucking his chin onto her shoulder, and she exhales and lets herself go, cries the way she has been in her too-large bed several nights a week, the way she hasn’t in front of another person in she isn’t sure how long, and her baby boy rubs her back.

“Better?” he asks maybe half an hour later, and she sniffles and nods. “Told you so.”

They watch Star Trek, and she lets him order burgers and ice cream from Uber Eats. She’s not trying to compete for the title of cool parent, okay, he wanted to live with her even when he thought it was just gonna be kale chips and cauliflower steak, but—well, there’s something to be said about the power of comfort food. 

“Thank you,” she says when she tucks him in that night, which she hasn’t done since he announced he was too old for it the day he turned eight. She isn’t sure if he’s letting her do it now for her sake or his own. “I’m sorry for lying to you about how I was feeling. I won’t do that anymore, even if there are some things I want to keep to myself.”

He nods, and she smooths his hair back and kisses his forehead. “You can let me know anytime you need to be held while you cry, too. I love you.”

“I know. I love you too, Mom,” he says, taking her hand in one of his and squeezing it before she turns the light off and softly shuts his door.

*

Four months later, she gets a call from a number she vaguely remembers having hastily typed into her phone on one of the worst nights of her life.

“Hey, Amanda! This is Bobby Brown, Johnny gave me your number.”

“Hey, Bobby,” she says, painting over any audible confusion with the smooth sheen of her best sales voice, “How are you?” 

“Can’t complain,” he says, and something about the cadence of his voice makes her relax her posture infinitesimally into her chair, smile at the very corners of her mouth. “Listen, I’m gonna be in the area tonight, checking in on Johnny before I’ve gotta preach a funeral nearby on Thursday, and I was wondering if you’d wanna grab a beer with us.”

She hasn’t drank beer since she was 23. It’s just an expression, she knows, she could easily find a glass of wine or a martini anywhere they end up, but she finds herself wondering if the taste could unlock some part of herself she thought she’d grown out of and maybe actually had only buried. 

Then again, assigning all that weight to alcohol can’t be healthy. She makes a note to mention it to her therapist (literally; she’s got a spreadsheet for that, too, color-coded by time sensitivity). 

“Sure,” she says, “where should I meet you?”

Sam is at Daniel’s, of course, and it’s not like it’s a long drive, but she’s still a little wary of the accidental implications of her actions; she doesn’t want asking her daughter to leave her ex-husband’s house to babysit for free to be loaded, somehow, like she’s trying to guilt Sam or Daniel or both. And she doesn’t even know for sure if Sam is busy, anyway, because they continue to “forget” to input any karate-related activities into the shared Google calendar no matter how many times she tells them she’d really rather know. So instead, she fires off a text to Demetri asking if he can come “hang out” for $30, since according to Anthony, 11-year-olds don’t need babysitters, but she’d really rather not have her kid drown in the pool, thanks. Or, more likely, totally miss a house fire while he was focused on getting to the next level in his video game.

He and Demetri get along well, though, in that weird way where all they do is snark at each other but they seem to both enjoy it. Sort of like Daniel and Johnny, she thinks, and is still grinning to herself half an hour later when she walks out the door. 

Johnny seems excited to see her when she walks in, which is kind of unexpected. They haven’t talked much recently, although she’s stopped by his apartment briefly a few times when she’s visited Carmen. Bobby has a big grin and a warm hug for her, too, and she catches herself thinking that it’s nice to have some human contact with someone other than an eleven-year-old boy.

(Carmen clasps her hand, sometimes, or hugs her, but that’s different, in a way Amanda doesn’t really want to analyze.) 

Bobby orders her an IPA—“None of that Coors crap,” he says, to which Johnny replies with a good-natured “Fuck you”—and the two of them immediately continue shooting the shit while Amanda sits back and laughs at them. 

“I ever tell you Ali sent me a friend request on the Facebook?” Johnny asks several beers later. Amanda likes beer, she's rediscovering. She wonders what else about herself she needs to learn again. 

Bobby rolls his eyes. “I’ve been her Facebook friend for like a decade, you’re not special. Her husband’s, too,” he adds.

“Who’s Ali?” Amanda asks, and Bobby gives a long-suffering sigh. 

“Johnny’s first love, and the epicenter of his issues with your ex-husband.”

“Ah,” Amanda says, shooting Johnny an amused look over the rim of her glass.

“Oh, come on, like you’ve never been there,” Johnny says, and she laughs.

“No, I can honestly say I’ve never had high school drama over a mutual romantic interest that festered into a rivalry strong enough to withstand three and a half decades.”

“Fine, tell us about them, then.”

“Who?” Amanda asks, but she notes the pronoun with a private smile. Johnny’s kids—the ones who’ve stuck around to get greasy diner food with him after he gets back from a repair job, or who kick his ass at pick-up soccer in Reseda’s shitty park on the weekends—have continued to do him some good.

“Your first love,” Johnny says, like it’s obvious. Amanda blinks.

“My first love,” she repeats, tracing her finger through the condensation on the side of her glass. “Well, uh. Her name was Imani. We met at church,” she says, and laughs, “and her mom and dad were the reason mine calmed down about me being bi. We were sixteen, and I couldn’t drive yet, but she’d take me to the beach in her mom’s minivan… Mostly we’d just hang out—and make out—at her house, because it was safer than being in public.” Johnny nods, more solemn than she would’ve thought he could get after this many drinks. Bobby looks like he might be a little misty-eyed. “And every day up until a little after I turned thirty, if she’d walked in the dealership, I would've hugged her and fixed her car for free,” Amanda admits. “After that, though, she only would’ve gotten the hug.”

Johnny eyes her warily. “What’re you saying, LaRusso?” 

Maybe she should feel weird about being referred to by what used to be her and her husband’s last name, but she kept it for a reason, and besides, it sounds oddly affectionate when Johnny says it, like she’s one of his buddies. It’s weirdly nice.

She takes another sip of her beer, raising her eyebrows at him. “I’m saying you should call him.”

Johnny splutters, and Bobby slaps her lightly on the back. “I knew I liked you,” he says, cackling. 

“Tell you what,” Johnny says, recovering, “I’ll call your repressed ex-husband when you make a move on my neighbor who hates my guts.” 

Bobby looks at her curiously, obviously interested in whatever drama is going on in her life, which Johnny has definitely just grossly exaggerated. But instead of explaining that it isn’t like that, or pointing out she doesn’t know if Carmen is even into women, what she says is, “Come on, I don’t really think now is the time. She’s going through a lot of… major life events,” she says delicately. She knows Johnny is still torn up about Miguel. 

“Yeah, so’s your ex-husband,” Johnny says, stressing the last word, which, okay, fair point. 

“Alright, so we’re all into people who are going through some things right now,” Bobby says, jokingly placating.

“Yeah, except for you, you eunuch,” Johnny retorts, which is apparently a strong enough motivator for Bobby to change the subject. 

He ends up asking about Johnny’s new job, which Johnny complains about loudly for a solid fifteen minutes before concluding, “I dunno, I still mean what I said back then about bringing Cobra Kai back being a mistake, but. I miss it, you know?” He downs the rest of his Coors and stares at the bottle. “At least Kreese got stuck with the fucking astronomical rent.”

That gives Amanda an idea.

They both give her a weird look when she gets her iPad out of her purse and starts typing on a spreadsheet in the middle of a bar, but when she asks, “How much was the rent there, by the way?” Johnny narrows his eyes in realization.

“You ever get tired of cleaning up LaRusso’s messes?” he asks, and she gives a wry smile. Eventually, though, he tells her what she wants to know. 

Bobby drives her home in the Audi, but not before taking Johnny’s keys. “I’ll get an Uber back to the bar and then drive you home, old man,” he says on the way out, and Johnny grumbles something into his beer.

“Thanks for calling me,” Amanda says after they’ve driven most of the way in silence. “It’s been a while since I’ve gone out.”

“I’m glad you came,” Bobby says, smiling warmly. He pulls into the driveway and parks. “Hey, before you go, there’s something I think you should read.” He rifles through his wallet.

“You gonna give me a tract?” she asks, and Bobby laughs.

“I'm not one of those pastors. No, a friend showed me this in college, and I got in the habit of keeping a copy with me since then. Here, you can have this one.”

“Thanks, Bobby,” she says, taking the paper and smiling at him. He waits until she’s inside before backing out.

She unfolds the worn paper alone in her cold, massive bed after brushing her teeth, flossing, taking off her makeup, and changing into a t-shirt and leggings. She’s still thinking about it the next day when she drives to Reseda and hands the owner of the bodega a box of oatmeal cream pies and a check for the difference in rent since Daniel’s stunt, plus the next six months’ worth in full.

_You do not have to be good._

_You do not have to walk on your knees_

_for a hundred miles through the desert repenting._

_You only have to let the soft animal of your body_

_love what it loves._

She hasn’t eaten an oatmeal cream pie since she was pregnant with Sam. She drives to Carmen’s, tears the box open, and they eat them outside, sitting on the concrete of the sidewalk by the parking lot. The square with the new curb cut is a shiny white compared to the dingy gray of the rest of them, already bearing the black streaks of skid marks from Miguel’s wheelchair tires.

_Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine._

_Meanwhile the world goes on._

“I miss Sam,” Amanda says, folding the empty plastic wrapper, and Carmen wraps an arm around her, leans her warm head on Amanda’s shoulder. “And Daniel,” she admits. “I wish I could talk to him without wanting to slap him across the face.”

_Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,_

_the world offers itself to your imagination,_

_calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --_

_over and over announcing your place_

_in the family of things._

Amanda tries to think of what she wanted to be when she grew up as a little girl—surely not a car salesperson. Surely not disgustingly rich and exhaustingly overworked and deeply unfulfilled.

Surely not divorced. 

Well, maybe her marriage wasn’t fixable, but that doesn’t mean her life isn’t. Carmen entwines her fingers with hers and invites her in for dinner and Amanda thinks, maybe no one is going to announce her place in the family of things. Maybe she’ll have to find it for herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the poem is from Wild Geese by Mary Oliver :’)


	4. Chapter 4

“Would you be mad if I got Miguel a car for his birthday?” she asks sometime in April. “Early birthday,” she amends, knowing that if Carmen says it’s okay, there’s no way she’s going to be able to make herself wait.

“Of course not,” Carmen says. “But—how, I mean, I thought he couldn’t drive?”

“I had a girlfriend who had a spinal cord injury when I was in college,” Amanda says. “UC Berkeley is sort of the hotspot for paralyzed 20-somethings. She was saving up for a car with hand controls.” She pulls up the page she’s bookmarked, tries not to feel creepy when she watches Carmen’s expression as she reads, the way Carmen’s hair falls to frame her face. 

Carmen brings a hand to her mouth. “I never thought—there’s so much he can still do, you know?” A tear falls, and Amanda holds out her arm; at Carmen’s nod, she envelops her, holds her as close as she can. “There’s so much he can do,” Carmen repeats, her voice full of a familiar awe; Amanda’s heard it in her own every time she discusses her kids’ accomplishments, Sam’s sports trophies and Anthony’s coding certificates and her little girl’s karate moves, once upon a time, back before it could have killed her. 

Amanda understands, is the thing, she’s performed enough cost-benefit analyses about the impacts of breaking her parents’ hearts to get that sometimes, you have to be your own person, no matter how many knives it takes to get there. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. Doesn’t mean she isn’t scared out of her mind. 

“Thank you,” Carmen says, looking up from Amanda’s shoulder and wiping her eyes. “Not just for the money, although of course that’s, it’s life-changing. For giving us hope.”

“Of course,” Amanda says quietly, and holds her tighter.

*

The house starts to feel—ostentatious, more of a showroom than a home. Too much space for ghosts to rattle around, chocolate-banana pancakes and family vacations and blood. 

She asks Anthony how he’d feel about moving one morning in early May, trying to be casual about it. He narrows his eyes at her. He’s always known her better than that, perceptive to a fault. Sometimes she thinks that’s why he’s got his nose in a game so often, the whirling emotions of the real world are too overstimulating, but maybe that’s her projecting. 

“Can I keep the PS5?”

She laughs, surprised despite herself. “Yes.”

He shrugs. “Then sure. I want a membership at a pool, too, though, if we aren’t gonna have one anymore. It’s almost summer break.”

“Are those the extent of your terms?” she asks, an eyebrow raised in amusement. He tilts his head for a moment, considering.

“Yep.”

“Then I think we have a deal,” she says, and they shake on it and order Chinese. 

Packing takes approximately a century, and it’s enough work physically and emotionally to almost talk her out of it on multiple occasions, but she finds a nice three-bedroom apartment with a small kitchen and a big porch, and they’re calling it home by mid-July. The realtor assures her the house won’t be on the market for long, which is good, because she’s officially announced she’s stepping down as CEO, and the income from stocks and being on the board isn’t going to cover the new astronomical rent forever. Rich people problems, she thinks with a self-deprecating smirk, but still. 

Sam comes over to decorate her room, clearly still not thrilled about the house being put up for sale, but it’s not like she was spending any time there. She likes the new comforter and pillows Amanda spent way too long picking out, though, deep blue with neon constellations all over them, and walks her through the steps of a new soup recipe she’s been wanting to try. Amanda reminds herself for the thousandth time that it isn’t a competition, but it definitely makes her feel on more even footing, that Sam saved this to do with her. 

Sam stops on her way to the door, reaching out to trace the edge of a picture frame. “I remember that Christmas,” she says, smiling slightly. “Grandma got everybody socks.”

“And Aisha’s new puppy had the best Christmas  _ ever _ with mine,” Amanda says, laughing. She puts a hand on Sam’s shoulder, squeezes, and Sam leans into the touch. Amanda kisses the side of her head. “I love you, you know,” she says, and she can feel her daughter roll her eyes even as Sam tips their foreheads together. “Your dad, too, even if we aren’t in the best place we’ve ever been right now.”

“I know, Mom. I love you, too.” They stand there together for a minute, looking at family photos that carry a bittersweetness that wasn’t there when they were taken. “I’m really proud of you,” Sam says eventually. “You and Dad always told me to do what’ll make me happy, even when it’s hard at first, and you’re out here, you know, walking the walk.” She elbows Amanda playfully, and Amanda laughs over the lump in her throat.

“That means a lot to me, sweetheart,” she admits, and holds the feeling close to herself long after Sam’s left. 

*

The election is, in a way, kind of Johnny Lawrence’s fault, too. She runs into him in the strip mall after giving a large check to the owner of the pawn shop—he’d tried to talk her into higher, but she’s a master at that game; she hadn’t budged—and he rolls his eyes immediately upon seeing her.

“Thought you usually reserved that reaction for my ex,” she jokes.

“I just know there’s only one reason you’d be in there when you own knick-knacks worth more than their entire inventory,” he says, gesturing at the pawn shop. “Aren’t you ever gonna get sick of cleaning up his crap?”

And it shouldn’t bother her—none of Johnny’s steady stream of bullshit ever has before, and she prides herself on being unruffleable, only made it this far through calmly deflecting and redirecting customers that hit on her and board members that tried to push her buttons—but it hits a sore spot she didn’t know she had until it’s already been lanced open, and then she’s gushing pus all over her nice blouse. More accurately, she’s saying, “Maybe I don’t know what else to do with myself, Johnny,” and crossing her arms. 

He blinks, startled, all those karate reflexes out the window the second someone starts talking about their feelings. “Hey, woah, I didn’t mean it like that.”

She sighs. “I know money isn’t a panacea, but—”

“Look, LaRusso,” he interrupts. “I once told my stepdad that money was all he had to give. But it’s not all  _ you _ have. Okay?”

And suddenly Amanda is blinking back tears. “Okay,” she says, and Johnny sighs.

“Oh, c’mere, I’m not totally heartless,” and he smells like sweat and is definitely getting dust all over her perfectly coordinated outfit, but she couldn’t care less.

“Johnny Lawrence, a good hugger,” she says, “who would’ve thought.”

“Yeah, don’t let on to Daniel about that,” he says, “I’ll never get out of bed in time for work.” And it’s strange, hearing her ex-husband’s first name out of his mouth, even though she’s been expecting it for a while now, thought she was prepared. It’s not a bad feeling, though, even if it’s a little tender to the touch. 

“You can do whatever you want,” Johnny says more seriously. “Pretty sure you were the only kid who got told that when it was actually true.”

“I don’t know what I want,” Amanda admits, and Johnny sighs, a long and contemplative and commiserating exhale. 

“I think I got—stuck, at a certain point in time, you know. And I couldn’t really figure out what I want now until I’d given that kid version of myself what he needed.” 

“That’s really insightful, Johnny,” she says, raising an eyebrow at him. Like, her actual therapist has definitely tried to tell her as much. He rolls his eyes. 

“Yeah, yeah, don’t go killing my street cred.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, do you have a tough reputation I’m not aware of? Is that from when you got arrested for beating up a bunch of high schoolers, or when you turned around and chaperoned their dance?”

He elbows her, but he’s laughing. “You’re a dick, LaRusso.”

She smiles. “Right back at you.”

She doesn’t forget about it, though, is the thing. And she finds herself poking at something inside herself, wondering—what  _ would  _ she have done if her parents’ expectations and then her own finances hadn’t pushed her into car sales? If she hadn’t spent so much of her life as half of a unit, Danny-and-Mandy, a good team but not one she could steer in just any old direction. 

The answer isn’t obvious, but it’s not that hard to unbury, either. She calls up the team they’d always used for marketing at the dealership and asks about their rates for campaign slogans.

*

Of all the people she’s expecting to see in Johnny Lawrence’s apartment for the post-election party, Carmen is not one of them. “I’m returning the favor,” he whispers to her, about as subtle as an elephant, before Daniel ushers her over to get a picture with the cake, which says CONGRATULATIONS, COUNTY TREASURER! and has a little stick woman doing a karate kick at a stick guy who looks suspiciously like the Republican candidate. 

“I did the lettering,” Sam says, giving her a side hug, and Anthony announces that he drew the people.

“Well, it looks lovely,” Amanda says. “Maybe I should’ve told the marketing team I’d do the karate gimmick after all.”

“Over my dead body,” Daniel says, but then he hugs her. “I’m proud of you, Mandy.”

“I’m proud of you, too,” she murmurs against his shoulder, and she means it. He seems—steadier, now, less inclined to breaking things or falling to pieces or indoctrinating teenagers. And she’s not going to pretend she doesn’t know where the “anonymous” campaign donation came from that just so happened to equal half of LaRusso Auto’s Q3 marketing budget last year. It doesn’t fix the issues with their old relationship, or make up for some of the shit he put her through, but it’s a start, and along with it, she’s starting to feel like she’s got her best friend back.

“Congratulations, Ms. LaRusso,” Robby says later; he’s been hanging back all evening, looking guarded, but Johnny says he’s been adjusting as well as can be expected in the two months since his yearlong stint in juvie ended. 

“Thank you, Robby,” she says, and she doesn’t try to hug him, but he relaxes minimally at her warm smile. “And to you, too—Johnny told me you’re working on getting your GED.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, ducking his head. “Got a lot of online coursework to get through before that, but.”

“Well, I’m proud of you,” she says. “I mean that. I know Daniel did some things that were pretty unforgivable when you last saw each other, and your dad’s trying his best to be sensitive of all that, but if you ever need some space, a place to stay, another adult to talk to—you have my number.”

He nods silently, eyes wide and guarded in that way that’s always made her want to hold and protect and  _ parent  _ him, and she nods back. She won’t say it yet, doesn’t want to scare him off by laying it on too thick, make him think she’s faking, but it’s true nonetheless: her family may look different now, but he’s still part of it. 

“Hey,” Carmen says at her elbow, “there you are,” and Amanda turns away from Robby with a final smile. “Congratulations. You’re going to do good work.”

“Thank you,” Amanda says. “I hope so.”

Carmen smiles. “I know so.”

“Thank you for being here. I don’t—I’d understand if you couldn’t.”

“He’s still not my favorite person in the world,” she admits, “but Miggy forgave him eventually, and after that, nothing could’ve kept him away. And he’s trying to do right by his kid,” she adds, glancing at where Robby lingers in a different corner now, nursing a Sprite. Carmen gives a small shrug. “I guess I could relate to that, at least.”

Amanda nods. “God, aren’t we all.”

Carmen’s smile turns from contemplative to mischievous. “Plus, on my invitation, he specifically wrote that you were single, so I suppose I owe him for that one.”

Amanda laughs, abrupt and unexpected. That fucker, she thinks affectionately, and shakes her head. “Well, he’s not wrong.”

“Do you think you could fit dinner into your busy schedule as a government official?” Carmen asks, eyes sparkling, and Amanda nods, unable to keep the smile off her face.

“I think I could squeeze you in.” 

Carmen takes her hand, both of them giggling now, and leads her back deeper into the chaos, the rowdy sounds of people who love her, who’ve carried each other, one way or another, through the worst year of their lives.  _ To the future,  _ she thinks, clinking champagne flutes of Sprite with her ex-husband and the guy he’s been in love with for ages and her maybe-soon-to-be-girlfriend and their myriad of wonderful and moody kids. She doesn’t say it out loud, though, because she knows Anthony would groan. 

“To the future,” Daniel says, and amid a chorus of the kids’ complaints, Amanda smiles into her glass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading! <3

**Author's Note:**

> i’m on tumblr @campgender where i yell a lot about these characters, come say hi!


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